Archive for February, 2008
Good god almighty! Did you see it? Did you see tonight’s episode?!?
My rollercoaster love affair continues, and tonight I’m at the dizzying heights. Now that was an awesome episode! Probably one of the best they’ve had in…well, forever. And not just because they started answering some of the BIG QUESTIONS about the island, but also because the emotional heart of the episode – Desmond’s tragic life and love for Penny – was so damn good.
So, I’d suspected for a while that the island exists “outside of time”. Not a revolutionary theory, obviously, as I’m sure a lot of other folks had come to the same conclusion. But this episode finally confirmed that theory. And it was scripted absolutely brilliantly; impeccable pacing, tight plot, emotional payoff.
So my other theory, about Jacob, was that Dharma had somehow induced (or boosted) his psychic abilities to uncontrollable levels. But now I think what’s happening to Jacob is what Desmond has been going through, jumping back and forth through time. Except in Jacob’s case, he’s jumping as such an accelerated pace, that he’s essentially come unglued from time as well, existing outside of it for the most part. Which is why sometimes people see him, or hear him, but not for any length of time.
I have a feeling they’ll also use the time travel phenomena to ultimately “redeem” Ben as a somewhat sympathetic figure. As a child on the island, he somehow sees what Dharma intends to do with the knowlege gained on the island, and it’s not good. So he decides in order to save the world, he has to kill them all. That’s why in his mind he’s so sure that he’s “the good guy”. And somehow, he knows how to navigate the time field between the island the the “real” world without any negative side effects.
Now, the part I’m not so sure about is who the freighter people are. Up until tonight I was convinced they were Dharma, coming back to reclaim their island. I always figured Penny’s father (Mr. Widmore), sun’s father (don’t remember his name) and Alvar Hanzo were all in it together; the brains and finance behind Dharma. But the auction scene with the log from the Black Rock being bought by Mr. Widmore makes me question that. They made it a point that the journal has belonged to the Hanzo family before the auction, and Widmore was intent on getting it. So, does that mean he’s not associated with Hanzo? If Hanzo was the Dharma founder, is Widmore’s group the “freighter” people, trying to essentially steal/salvage what remains of Dharma’s research?
On a final note, Wendy just made a great observation: so here’s Desmond, the guy Widmore supposedly hates, yet he gives him his daughter’s contact info? He is also the guy who later on would “sponsor” the sailing race around the world that Desmond embarks on. Wendy thinks it’s because Widmore knows what will happen with Desmond, knows about the time travel, etc. He sets Desmond up from the beginning: making sure Desmond gets Penny’s contact info as his “constant”, then concocting the whole race to get Desmond on a boat, knowing he’ll end up on the island, knowing him and Penny will try and find each other, and thus allowing Widmore to find the island through Desmond.
My brain’s exploding. This episode was amazingly good!
One last thing before I go: Daniel Faraday is my new favorite character, and the actor who plays him deserves an award. Above and beyond anything else this show does well, I have to say they have phenomenal casting. I can’t think of a single actor on the show that hasn’t been impeccably cast for the role they are portraying.
The title says it all.
I’m printing out two books right now, right? One of them I did at digest size, which I hate, because there’s no room for my words. My precious, precious words.
So I decided to do the other one at standard comic book size. That requires printing out on 11 by 7 paper and cutting down. I’ve tried to do this before, and I really should know better.
I laid the pages out in InDesign 2-up, being very careful to get the right pages facing each other. I made a little mockup of the book with notebook paper to check the pages. In InDesign, I got the pages dead in the center of the document, and I even put in crop marks so I’d know where to cut.
Of course the printer prints each page a fraction of an inch off. The error is magnified when each page goes to double-sided. My beautiful, beautiful crop marks are a fraction of an inch off on every side.
6.62″ by 10″ can kiss my mulatto ass.
Optical Sloth recently reviewed PANEL X and said what we’ve all been thinking: “Well, it’s about damned time they got to sex.” The Mr. Love story gets a special call out as “probably the strongest piece in here, dealing with various cupids trying to make love happen, how some people don’t know who they are yet and how love can actually hinder them from figuring that out.” Overall it is a positive review, concluding “to these people and their committment to quality work, I wish more anthologies were as consistently enjoyable as these.”
Find the full review and reviews of all ten PANEL anthologies on the Panel Anthologies page.
PANEL X, our new anthology, PANEL: Work (Vol. 11), and previous issues of PANEL will all be available at SPACE this weekend (March 1 & 2)
Killing mobsters. What a way to start the week off. Guess away!
(click image to BLAMersize)
(previous weeks: 9/12/2005, 9/19/2005, 9/26/2005, 10/3/2005, 10/10/2005, 10/17/2005, 10/24/2005, 10/31/2005, 11/1/2005, 11/2/2005, 11/3/2005, 11/4/2005, 11/5/2005, 11/6/2005, 11/7/2005, 11/14/2005, 11/21/2005, 11/28/2005, 12/5/2005, 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, 12/26/2005, 1/2/2006, 1/9/2006, 1/16/2006, 1/23/2006, 1/30/2006, 2/06/2006, 2/13/2006, 2/20/2006, 2/27/2006, 3/6/2006, 3/13/2006, 3/20/2006, 3/27/2006, 4/3/2006, 4/4/2006, 4/5/2006, 4/6/2006, 4/7/2006, 4/8/2006, 4/9/2006, 4/10/2006, 4/17/2006, 4/23/2006, 5/1/2006, 5/8/2006, 5/15/2006, 5/22/2006, 5/29/2006, 6/5/2006, 6/12/2006, 6/19/2006, 6/26/2006, 7/3/2006, 7/10/2006, 7/17/2006, 7/24/2006, 7/31/2006, 8/7/2006, 8/13/2006, 8/21/2006, 8/28/2006, 9/4/2006, 9/11/2006, 9/18/2006, 9/25/2006, 10/2/2006, 10/9/2006, 10/16/2006, 10/23/2006, 10/30/2006, 11/6/2006, 11/13/2006, 11/20/2006, 11/27/2006, 12/4/2006, 12/11/2006, 12/18/2006, 12/25/2006, 1/1/2007, 1/8/2007, 1/15/2007, 1/22/2007, 1/29/2007, 2/5/2007, 2/12/2007, 2/19/2007, 2/26/2007, 3/5/2007, 3/12/2007, 3/19/2007, 3/26/2007, 4/2/2007, 4/5/2007, 4/9/2007, 4/16/2007, 4/23/2007, 4/30/2007, 5/7/2007, 5/14/2007, 5/21/2007, 5/28/2007, 6/4/2007, 6/11/2007, 6/18/2007, 6/25/2007, 7/2/2007, 7/9/2007, 7/16/2007, 7/23/2007, 7/30/2007, 8/6/2007, 8/13/2007, 8/20/2007, 8/27/2007, 9/3/2007, 9/10/2007, 9/17/2007, 9/24/2007, 10/1/2007, 10/8/2007, 10/15/2007, 10/22/2007, 10/29/2007, 11/5/2007, 11/12/2007, 11/19/2007, 11/26/2007, 12/3/2007, 12/10/2007, 12/17/2007, 12/24/2007, 12/31/2007, 1/7/2008, 1/14/2008, 1/21/2008, 1/28/2008, 2/4/2008, 2/11/2008, 2/18/2008)
My turn to beat the dead horse:
I was recently lured back into the Laughing Ogre because I wanted to establish a pull account in order to make sure I didn’t miss a particular new title I had read was coming out– namely, IDW’s new Doctor Who series based on the revived television show. With some considerable effort I managed to come up with a list of monthly books that met their minimum requirement to establish the account, and I waited until the announced release month of January to pick up the first issue of the new series.
Hey, guess what, we’re about to roll into March and that first issue hasn’t appeared yet. I know late books aren’t exactly a new complaint in this particular market, but I was contemplating an angle of the issue I hadn’t heard mentioned before. Had the publisher managed to ship their books according to schedule, I would be about to buy my third issue of the series. Assuming the first issue actually debuts in March, I would have bought three times the number of issues by that time– multiply my purchase by however many people were planning on getting the book, and it seems IDW has lost a pretty hefty chunk of money by not delivering their product on time. So why do publishers put up with this crap themselves?
I’ll grant that most comic readers now seem to follow creators rather than being fans of specific titles or characters, but I wonder how many other industries don’t consider missed deadlines the kiss of death for freelance artists.
At least I’ve got the new Millar/Hitch Fantastic Four to look forward to in the coming months…
Via The Beat, I ran across this information-ladden interview with the producers of LOST over at the Entertainment Weekly website. They talk about the whole time/space theory, which mysteries will be answered by the end of this season, which ones won’t, and other juicy goodies.
“LINDELOF: We’re not going to tell you that we’re against bending the time-space continuum. We are very for it. Carlton and I are PRO time-space continuum bending! But we’re ANTI-paradox. Paradox creates issues…So when we start having those conversations at Lost, we go, ”This show is already confusing enough as it is.” To actually have characters traveling through time has to be handled very deftly.CUSE: For example, the fifth episode of the season [airing next week] deals with time travel and operates in different time periods. It was a tough story to break. But we adhere to our rule: no paradox. “
We’ll find out who’s in the coffin by the end of this season, for example. And I found this comment funny:
“LINDELOF: One of our producers, Eddie Kitsis, has been pitching to us ”Frank Lapidus, Helicopter Pilot” for years. “
I’d watch that show!
Jessie Fink, frequent contributor to Threadless and cartoonist, unfortunately got one of her t-shirt designs lifted by a design company. You can read more about it on her LJ and or on a newish blog called ‘You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice‘.
Last night Tony and I (along with Bob Corby & Max Ink) were on the Open Mike, Insert Foot podcast. Talking.. hugging.. loving S.P.A.C.E. with Mike Leuszler. Go to the Talkshoe homepage. Tim Fischer pops in to harass us. It was an interesting experience.
I spent about five hours last weekend filing and arranging my comics. I’m not quite done, but at least things are in order.
I had a longbox full with comics that were unfiled — they were alphabetical in the box, but not bagged or archived. I also had all the comics I bought since I moved in with Jess, sitting unbagged in piles around my drawing table.
I finally found Dara’s Moon Knight comics, as well as some others of his that I borrowed ages ago. And I found Craig’s Schoedinger’s Cat pages.
I found some things I forgot I had. Did you know I have about two dozen issues of Christopher Priest’s Steel run? It’s like his Black Panther, of which I have nearly 60 issues. And Steven Grant’s X! Man, X rocks.
But for me personally, I really like the fact that I can now put my hand on any comic in my collection. Do you want to read U.S. War Machine? Here you go. The Day of Vengeance miniseries? Right here. A few random issues of Midnight Suns? Check. Marvel’s 1990 Brute Force miniseries? I am your hookup.
A thought balloon forms over my head: ‘I don’t need to buy comics for a while. I can just go “shopping” in my own archives.’
But then I realized that I also could find out which runs have holes in them. So really, I need to buy more comics to fill in those holes.
More good fortune on ebay; besides the signed Avengers I posted earlier and the Sal Buscema con sketch that Steve liked so much, I just scored the following for a song:
A Herb Trimpe Shogun Warriors page! ‘Nuff said.
I found this beauty trolling for Hulk pages; Butch Guice, from (I believe) an Iron Man WW Hulk crossover issue. If I had known he was drawing that series, I might have checked it out…Back to the color pages…
(click image to 4colorize)
(previous weeks: 9/12/2005, 9/19/2005, 9/26/2005, 10/3/2005, 10/10/2005, 10/17/2005, 10/24/2005, 10/31/2005, 11/1/2005, 11/2/2005, 11/3/2005, 11/4/2005, 11/5/2005, 11/6/2005, 11/7/2005, 11/14/2005, 11/21/2005, 11/28/2005, 12/5/2005, 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, 12/26/2005, 1/2/2006, 1/9/2006, 1/16/2006, 1/23/2006, 1/30/2006, 2/06/2006, 2/13/2006, 2/20/2006, 2/27/2006, 3/6/2006, 3/13/2006, 3/20/2006, 3/27/2006, 4/3/2006, 4/4/2006, 4/5/2006, 4/6/2006, 4/7/2006, 4/8/2006, 4/9/2006, 4/10/2006, 4/17/2006, 4/23/2006, 5/1/2006, 5/8/2006, 5/15/2006, 5/22/2006, 5/29/2006, 6/5/2006, 6/12/2006, 6/19/2006, 6/26/2006, 7/3/2006, 7/10/2006, 7/17/2006, 7/24/2006, 7/31/2006, 8/7/2006, 8/13/2006, 8/21/2006, 8/28/2006, 9/4/2006, 9/11/2006, 9/18/2006, 9/25/2006, 10/2/2006, 10/9/2006, 10/16/2006, 10/23/2006, 10/30/2006, 11/6/2006, 11/13/2006, 11/20/2006, 11/27/2006, 12/4/2006, 12/11/2006, 12/18/2006, 12/25/2006, 1/1/2007, 1/8/2007, 1/15/2007, 1/22/2007, 1/29/2007, 2/5/2007, 2/12/2007, 2/19/2007, 2/26/2007, 3/5/2007, 3/12/2007, 3/19/2007, 3/26/2007, 4/2/2007, 4/5/2007, 4/9/2007, 4/16/2007, 4/23/2007, 4/30/2007, 5/7/2007, 5/14/2007, 5/21/2007, 5/28/2007, 6/4/2007, 6/11/2007, 6/18/2007, 6/25/2007, 7/2/2007, 7/9/2007, 7/16/2007, 7/23/2007, 7/30/2007, 8/6/2007, 8/13/2007, 8/20/2007, 8/27/2007, 9/3/2007, 9/10/2007, 9/17/2007, 9/24/2007, 10/1/2007, 10/8/2007, 10/15/2007, 10/22/2007, 10/29/2007, 11/5/2007, 11/12/2007, 11/19/2007, 11/26/2007, 12/3/2007, 12/10/2007, 12/17/2007, 12/24/2007, 12/31/2007, 1/7/2008, 1/14/2008, 1/21/2008, 1/28/2008, 2/4/2008, 2/11/2008)